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On January 30, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive machine inside a packed mosque, killing at the least 100 folks and injuring greater than 225 within the metropolis of Peshawar, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province close to the border with Afghanistan. The assault, one of many worst to hit Pakistan in recent times, occurred deep contained in the Police Strains space, a high-security zone dwelling to the area’s Police Secretariat.
Whereas a commander affiliated with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistani Taliban, took to Twitter shortly afterwards to declare duty for the assault, a spokesperson for the outfit subsequently refuted allegations of the group’s involvement. Both manner, the size of Monday’s bombing, which comes on the heels of a pointy rise in terrorist incidents in Pakistan in current months, doesn’t bode nicely for Pakistan’s leaders as they try to grapple with a number of crises at dwelling.
The newest assault now underscores the necessity for a complete evaluation of the nation’s counterterrorism methods. However in opposition to a backdrop of mounting socioeconomic instability and political polarisation, it’s unclear whether or not Pakistan’s leaders will be capable to successfully sort out the nation’s rising safety challenges.
A failed safety technique
Even when the TTP, which has waged an on-again, off-again insurgency in opposition to the Pakistani state for nearly 15 years, does select to distance itself from Monday’s heinous assault, there is no such thing as a denying that in current months the group and its associates have ramped up their concentrating on of police and law-enforcement officers as they’ve tried to increase operational actions past the province. It’s estimated that the TTP has carried out near 100 assaults since November.
Pakistan’s decision-makers say that militants together with the TTP have benefitted enormously from havens made accessible to them in neighbouring Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021.
The Afghan Taliban’s reluctance to behave in opposition to the TTP stems from the truth that it views the outfit as a great tool in opposition to the Pakistani state. By giving the TTP shelter, the Afghan Taliban can assert its personal strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Pakistan’s safety institution. And Islamabad’s leverage over the Afghan Taliban, whereas restricted to start with, has solely waned for the reason that group took over Kabul.
Due to that, Pakistani officers have resorted to a carrot-and-stick coverage. On the one hand, they’ve tried to barter with the TTP in closed-door talks hosted by the Afghan Taliban, and on the opposite, they’ve carried out a collection of covert, intelligence-based operations deep inside Afghanistan, concentrating on particular person TTP commanders.
Whereas these operations have ostensibly seen some tactical successes, such because the killing of senior TTP commander Khalid Khorasani final 12 months, general the twin technique doesn’t fairly appear to have labored as Pakistan had supposed. In November, the TTP abruptly ended a five-month-long ceasefire after the Pakistan Military stepped up counterterror operations within the border space. And within the first assertion issued on Monday, the TTP alleged that the assault on Peshawar’s Police Strains was, in truth, retaliation for Khorasani’s killing.
Negotiations have additionally failed to supply something however short-term ceasefires, because the TTP has held quick to its declared objective of the imposition of its strict interpretation of Islamic regulation throughout the complete nation, together with a reversal of the nation’s 2018 merger of the previous Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Tackling a number of crises
Sadly, as a substitute of eliciting a united response geared in the direction of eliminating terrorism, resurgent violence throughout Pakistan has solely compounded already deeply worrying socio-political and ethnic fault traces.
Earlier in January, the provincial assemblies of Pakistan’s two largest provinces, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, each held by former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s opposition get together Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, had been dissolved in a tactical bid to pressurise the ruling coalition in Islamabad to name for early elections. Whereas caretaker cupboards have since been sworn in to steer each provinces till elections will be held within the subsequent 90 days, there may be each probability that the TTP will attempt to exploit an ill-timed political vacuum.
Towards this vacuum, the strategic concentrating on of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s civilian law-enforcement businesses by militant teams appears cunningly calculated: to reveal the provincial authorities’s state weaknesses and incapability to counter violent militancy, and to rally terrorist recruitment by the TTP and its associates.
As Pakistan prepares for each provincial and nationwide elections later this 12 months, an all-too-familiar consequence of this preliminary ground-clearing by terrorist teams will seemingly be heightened political violence. Within the nation’s 2013 normal elections, the TTP notoriously focused the management of a number of political events. The group’s violence was particularly extreme in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which in flip made it troublesome for a lot of events to marketing campaign successfully.
Pakistan’s present political disaster is compounded by an financial one. This month Pakistan’s international trade reserves dropped to their lowest level since 2014. Final week Pakistani cities suffered a nationwide energy outage, plunging an already-sick financial system into darkness.
Pakistan’s cash-strapped leaders are fervently hoping that the Worldwide Financial Fund will disburse a $1.1bn mortgage. However talks with the worldwide monetary establishment have stalled in current months, which doesn’t bode nicely for the Pakistani financial system.
What is evident now could be that Pakistan urgently requires some modicum of political stability for it to successfully grapple with a fancy array of financial and safety challenges. Finally this necessitates that the nation’s political and army leaders carefully cooperate to make sure free and honest democratic transitions later this 12 months. This may be the idea of credible political mandates that permit for powerful choices to be taken on the financial, political and safety fronts.
Absent that stability, there may be each probability that Pakistan’s financial woes could result in widespread social unrest, which can solely improve the area for extra terrorist violence.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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